


Three Times

by opencirclefleet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4885726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opencirclefleet/pseuds/opencirclefleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two times Obi-Wan dies and comes back, and the one time he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akathecentimetre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/gifts), [Godoflaundrybaskets (digiella)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/digiella/gifts).



> Basically I didn't know there was a bail/obi-wan fandom until akathecentimetre and Godoflaundrybaskets (digiella) made me aware of this and now I'm in too deep with all my ships so this is for them! Hope you guts like it :)

The first time Obi-Wan Kenobi dies, Bail doesn’t know what to make of it. 

The Clone War has been raging for almost a year now. Thousands of clone troopers have been made and lost, and the Jedi have suffered no shortage of casualties. Soon enough, the endless litany of dead and missing becomes second hand information undoubtedly awaiting in the stacks of datapads and flimsi sheets towering precariously on Bail’s desk. 

The Jedi Master is just another name on a list of casualties scrolling endlessly along the bottom of his datapad. Bail had only met Kenobi a handful of times, through Senate functions and a few of Senator Amidala’s get togethers. Instead of sliding over the death report like they normally would, Bail’s eyes catch and linger on the words,  Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, General. KIA Jabiim, 14:7.  A memory of a quiet smile and wicked, multichromatic eyes bubbles to the surface, and he can’t help but feel a twinge of loss for a man he never really knew. 

Padme’s face is pinched with grief the next time he sees her, though even dealing with her own personal loss she still fights with a furious passion on the Senate floor. Gods help anyone who gets in either her or Skywalker’s way in the following months, Bail thinks, because he wouldn’t want to be the one on whom they take their emotions out.

A few months later, the fuss dies down. Obi-Wan Kenobi is just one of the many honorable Jedi lost in the conflict. A sincere loss, to be sure, but ultimately a sacrifice for a greater cause. At least, that’s what Bail tells himself when he sees the daily casualties. 

But then out of nowhere, a rumor spreads like wildfire, carrying news of the Jedi’s return from the dead on its ashes. The Order neither confirms nor denies these rumors; not explicitly, anyway. 

Had a certain Senator not confided in him the good news, Bail would have been infinitely more surprised to see the presumed dead Jedi at Padme’s apartment many nights later. Obi-Wan is painfully thin, battered and bruised but very much alive.  Torture  had been one of the many words fluttering around the rumors, but until now Bail had thought it to be just that: rumor. Except there are shadows in the Jedi’s multichromatic eyes and a certain haunted feel to the way he keeps tucking his hands in his sleeves and glancing about the room. 

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Master Kenobi,” Bail says, and he truly means it. Perhaps he means it a little  too  much for someone who, for all intents and purposes, it practically a stranger. But Obi-Wan smiles and thanks him with a genuinity that reaches his eyes, and in that moment Bail has never been so grateful to know that the casualty lists were wrong. 

 

* * *

 

The second time Obi-Wan dies, Bail is heartbroken.

He’s present at the funeral, of course, feeling hollow as he drags himself from the Senate building to the Temple. He goes as a close acquaintance, not as the--the-- whatever-- their relationship evolved to after Zigoola. It takes all he has to not look away as the body-- Obi-Wan’s body,  his  Obi-Wan’s body-- is lowered to the ground, a brilliant shaft of light spearing the ceiling to mark the Jedi’s passing. His eyes meet Anakin’s for the briefest of seconds--coldly furious blue meeting achingly sad brown. They give the other a short nod, understanding passing in their gaze. 

The next few days are a blur. He pushes through the long, frustrating hours with a heavy heart and a numb smile. The war continues, battles are won and lost. More problems arise than are resolved in the Senate. The stars keep shining at night as if one of their own hasn’t just been extinguished. 

Bail knows next to nothing of what happened on Naboo. Just like before, whispers through the Senate reach him before any concrete evidence does, though it’s enough to make his stomach twist with hope. 

He ends up hearing the news from Padme. Relief is the first thing he feels; anger is the second. Because unlike the first time, this was deliberate. This was Obi-Wan willingly faking his death and not uttering a  word  of it to Bail, and it hurts. Ancestors, it hurts, this breach of trust. And when Obi-Wan shows up at his door a few days after his second miraculous resurrection (a few days too long, in Bail’s opinion), he doesn’t know whether to kiss him or deck him. 

Bail decides against the latter, taking a closer look at the Jedi. Bruises ring his storm gray eyes, and his right cheekbone is mottling a nasty yellowish-green. He looks a bit funny with his hair and his beard growing in short, bristly patches. Somehow this gives the combined effect of him looking smaller, dwarfed by his robes and cloak. 

They stare at each other for a second--Bail standing with his arms crossed and a surely furious expression on his face, Obi-Wan hunching in the doorway with an apology in his eyes. 

Bail releases his frustrations, his hurt and his anger, with a sharp breath. “Come here,” he mutters, and in three long strides has the Jedi wrapped tightly in his arms. 

“I’m sorry.” The words are somewhat swallowed by a desperate kiss, but Bail understands it for what it is--an apology for causing him pain, for not telling him. But not for doing it. If the Council asked, Obi-Wan would do it again in a heartbeat, his sense of duty outweighing his own sense of self preservation. 

Bail doesn’t press for anything more; no deeper expression of feelings, no promise that he won’t die again, either for a mission or on some Gods-forsaken battlefield lightyears away.

Instead, he all but drags the Jedi to his room. He accepts the apology with murmured kisses and gentle touches, and a resolve not to waste any more precious moments the galaxy has allowed him. 

 

* * *

 

The third and final time Obi-Wan dies, Bail is not around for it. 

Obi-Wan feels Alderaan’s sudden loss rip through the galaxy with an intensity he hasn’t felt since the Purge. Physical pain knocks the breath from his lungs and staggers him. Obi-Wan clenches his eyes shut as millions of beings wink out of existence.

Bail is an afterthought. Only after the full weight of Alderaan’s destruction sinks in does he realize the personal loss he has just suffered. Even though he’d let that attachment go years prior, it still hurts. He feels his heart constrict in pain, releasing it in a short breath. 

“You okay, Ben?” Luke asks worriedly, too-familiar eyes looking at him with concern. He seems vaguely uncomfortable, as if sensing something wrong but not knowing what it is. Alderaan has affected him too. The boy’s Force senses are strong, even if they are a bit dull from being untrained. 

“Oh, I’m fine, Luke. Just a bit tired.” He closes his eyes, searches for the thread of attachment still lingering in the Force, untethered from where it has recently been cut off. Obi-Wan takes a moment to remember Bail--his smile, his laugh, the memories of better days--and lets him go. 

He truly is tired--of losing people, of failure, of the constant cloud of Darkside hanging over his head. But he musters a smile for Luke’s sake and reaches out to the Force to give him strength.

After all, they have a mission to complete. 


End file.
